


Runner

by RetroactiveCon



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Creepy Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells, Manipulative Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:15:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27657392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon
Summary: He tells himself he’s doing what is best for both of them. Have her alter the course of history, stop Cicada, and the damn dagger keeping him imprisoned will be destroyed long before it was ever used to contain him. In the process, have her meet her father, get to know him…and never, never tell him how she got back. She’ll receive the rest of her training from her father, as she should have done. Eobard will have both his penance and his freedom.Of course it’s more complicated than that.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Runner

Eobard has had plenty of time to think, in this cell. To wonder, and to reflect. How differently he and Barry might have interacted had he not been so embittered upon realizing that he would never be the Flash. The world that could have been, had he decided futures could be changed, as Barry Allen has time and time again. The possibility of forgiveness, of penance…but that way lies madness, twisted up in soured hero worship and old, toxic love. He’s almost made peace with his fate and resigned himself that death cannot be outrun forever, when Nora West-Allen runs into the room. 

Upon hearing some of her tale and deducing the rest, Thawne is incredulous. Iris West-Allen, relentless in her pursuit of truth, might as well have gift-wrapped her daughter for him with one single, dreadful lie. The news is euphoric. As he shaped the father, all those years ago during his endless fifteen years of _waiting_ …so he can shape the daughter. She’s begging him to teach her, to shape her, to guide her into her potential. He ought to be ecstatic at having such a willing pawn to manipulate, and yet…and yet. 

He took her father from her. He’s the reason she grew up never knowing Barry—the reason that, instead, she idolized him from afar, as Eobard himself did. Iris may have left her helpless and vulnerable, reliant on Eobard for the guidance she got nowhere else—but he shaped her from childhood, as he did Barry. Only this time, he did so without knowing, without intending. And in the process, he created someone a little too close to himself. He can see it in the way she talks about the Flash, with the same bright-eyed, overzealous adoration he used to feel. He has set her up for failure, and when she asks for the chance to run back to the past to see her father, all he can see is himself, all those years ago. 

He almost tells her not to go. It’s too easy to think of her encountering the same hardened, distrustful Flash he met, quick to lash out, slow to believe. Daughter or not, the mere mention of her association with Eobard…well. Eobard can too well imagine her being thrown in a Pipeline cell, as he was. He doesn’t want that for the little runner. He should tell her he can’t help her and harden his heart to her pleas. But that won’t help him, and it will crush her.

He tells himself he’s doing what is best for both of them. Have her alter the course of history, stop Cicada, and the damn dagger keeping him imprisoned will be destroyed long before it was ever used to contain him. In the process, have her meet her father, get to know him…and never, never tell him how she got back. She’ll receive the rest of her training from her father, as she should have done. Eobard will have both his penance and his freedom. 

Of course it’s more complicated than that. Nora keeps coming back, and…oh, that’s just too delicious. It means that not only does she continue to look to him as a trusted mentor—adorably like her young father in that regard—but that she’s heard no mention of his crimes against her family. Her sweet father is keeping secrets from his daughter, even though she must have heard him mention Eobard by now. Sometimes, traces of his old, sadistic self rise up, and he considers asking her to tell Barry that Eobard Thawne sends his regards. No, no, he mustn’t do that. Barry would take that out on the messenger, his sweet little runner, and Eobard can’t bear for her to lose her adoration for Barry as cruelly as he had. 

He knows this can only end badly. He keeps that knowledge locked deep inside him, pretends it doesn’t drive him, but…oh, his feelings have always been complicated where Barry Allen was concerned, and his sweet daughter only makes them more fraught. In her naïve sweetness, he sees echoes of the wide-eyed Barry who used to adore the false Wells, whose earnest hope and wide-eyed affection made Eobard truly fond of him despite his deep, abiding hatred for what Barry would become. In her relentless goodness, he finds reminders that should he ever escape, this girl ought to be his enemy…and yet it would break his heart to fight her. (She’s too much like him. He wants for her what he never had.) And yet the joy of it all is that he can have both. He can hate the father and love the daughter…and better yet, he can _hurt_ the father with his love for the daughter. When their secret comes to light, Barry Allen’s heart will be torn to shreds anew. 

It wasn’t exactly Eobard’s plan. But on some deeper level, he can’t help wondering whether, despite wishing the best for his sweet little runner, he had wanted the secret to come out all along.


End file.
